If Word crashes, hangs or has other oddball behavior, you can reset it to its factory settings by doing two things:

• Locate and delete the file normal.dot
• Locate and delete the data registry key
  • Click Start – Run and enter regedit in the text field provided.
  • Click to open the following
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER
    • Software
    • Microsoft
    • Office
    • 11.0 (Varies as of what version you have)
    • Word
    • Data
  • The Data key will contain two or three subitems, depending on your version of Office: Settings, Toolbars and ToolbarsWordMail. Just delete the entire key.
  • Start and see if Word now works

This is safe to do, as long as you do not have any settings saved in your normal.dot file. By settings I mean autotext entries, macros, or similar.